


Like A Star

by celeztials



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Slow Build, but there will be klance, not super klance centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 03:05:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9415346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeztials/pseuds/celeztials
Summary: Lance is young when the Fire Nation raids begin that threaten to force him from his family and into a foreign nation.





	1. Winter I.

**Author's Note:**

> this is what happens when you really wanna write a klance/lance centric fic but have a very short attention span: a series of atla drabbles

The snow. He remembers the snow.

Abuela always says that the best time to bend it is when it first falls from the sky; that’s when it’s still fresh and malleable, soft to the touch. She's not the only waterbender in the Southern Tribe, but to Lance, she is the best, and when she takes him aside to teach him, he heeds her every word. He latches to her instructions, he pauses for her critiques, and more importantly than anything, he adapts when he has to. He is an extension of his element just as much as it is an extension of him. He is fluid, he is versatile, he is changeable.

Abuela demonstrates, waving a flurry of flakes around Lance's head, and he's in awe, always, at how magnificent is element is. How magnificent his element can be.

When he's ready to try, he makes snowballs in his little mitten clad hands, and when he sticks his tongue out and focuses real hard, sometimes the flakes will swish and swirl around, but never the way he intends them to. His bending is not artful and precise like Abuela’s. It’s not aggressive and rough like the warriors of his village. It's barely even his own yet. Water still controls him more than he controls it.

But Abuela believes in him. She always tells him he’s doing a good job. When he gets frustrated, she kisses his cold, round cheeks and tells him she loves him. She tells him he's superb, she tells him he's her  _corazón_ , and no matter how much he huffs and stomps his feet, she tells him he is the most wonderful little waterbender she has ever seen. She never lets him get too hard on himself, and in turn, he never lets himself be defeated.

Every time it snows again, and it comes down soft and fresh, Lance waddles outside in his tiger-seal boots, determined to make the snow move the way he wants it to.


	2. Winter II.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm probably gonna update this 3ish times a week because the chapters are pretty short but idk what do you guys think of this so far?

Lance is the third of three children, but the first waterbender in the family in a long time, and as such, he rarely feels overlooked. He’s still not particularly good at his element yet; he still struggles and splashes around in icy puddles whenever he can to try and learn. Whenever a new sheet of snow falls, he’ll run from his hut, slipping on the frozen terrain in an attempt to get more in tune with his element. Sometimes, when he asks Papi to take him fishing, he’ll steal a moment to cast a hand over the chilly waves, opening and closing his fists to bend the water to his will.

Of course, everyone supports him. Abuela, more than anybody. Lance is starting to get old enough to go out and practice on his own, which is fine. It gives Abuela time to rest her aging bones, and when Lance returns from long days of practicing, she’ll start up a fire and help him out of the soggy clothes he’s been splashing around in, telling him stories of all their late family members that were once some of the greatest benders in their tribe.

He tries to imagine it; dozens and dozens of incredible people dotting his lineage, fantastic benders, masters even, almost untouchable in their skill set. He thinks of his own great aunts and uncles who Abuela tells him could pull water from the clouds, who could turn droplets into daggers and make the waves dance, back and forth, back and forth, beautifully around their village.

“And you’ll be just as great as them, one day,” Abuela says, and it always makes Lance smile. Even in the icy tundra, her words warm his innocent, beating heart and remind him, that even on the coldest days, when the wind whips his skin til his fingers turn blue and he has to trot home in soaking wet clothes, he can never stop trying.

And so, he doesn't.


	3. Winter III.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wasn't intending to include allura/coran/shiro/alfor etc. in this fic but now i'm thinking they can all have brief cameos. on a related note this is the last "set up" chapter before i start actually getting into the heart of the plot

Sometimes at night, if Lance is awake still, he can peep outside the openings of his tarp, and stare at the sky. Abuela always tells him of Tui & La, the spirits in the North that are always caught in an eternal dance, pushing and pulling the tides that one day, he too will control.

There’s lots of stories in his village about the North. Everyone talks about Chief Alfor, one of the strongest benders currently alive, and his lovely daughter, Princess Allura, who will soon be of marrying age. But more importantly to Lance, they tell tales of a land where waterbending is even more acceptable, a city where the entire infrastructure is even more conducive to living in harmony with his element, and the thought alone makes his heart swell in anticipation.

One day, he tells himself, he’ll learn to master water and he’ll travel to the North to finish his training. He’ll learn all that he can, master every style known to man, and when he accomplishes that, he’ll come back to his home in the South. He’ll teach all the children, give them the opportunity to grow and learn and reach their full potential. And one day, instead of being a small, humble village, the Southern Water Tribe will morph into a beautiful landscape carved by benders where everyone will live, as people born to the ocean.

For now, all he can do is practice until he gets to that point. Sometimes, when he bends, the water cooperates with him. It listens and reacts, though not always the way he wants it to, but he’s getting better. He can feel it. It’s in the way Mami and Papi smile at him when he expertly moves streams of water with his hands. It’s how Abuela gasps in delight when he finally starts retaining all the little tidbits she’s shown him.

He’s learning. He’s growing. And at night, when everyone else is fast asleep, Lance crawls out from under his blanket, and looks at the stars dazzling in the sky.


	4. Winter IV.

There’s only one thing Lance knows about foreign ships, and that’s to stay as far away from them as possible. Sometimes when he leaves the heart of the village, he gets closer to the dark, freezing ocean, where he can splash and bend to his heart’s content. He’s finally getting skilled enough that Abuela is letting him study scrolls, ancient, dusty, and passed down from one generation to the next to keep the culture alive. And sometimes, when he’s all the way out here, struggling to get the water to look like it does on paper, big, black, metallic ships will trudge on by in the distance.

Lance has only seen some of them from far away, so when this particular metal monster scales closer and closer to shore, he wastes no time in letting the water he’s bending splatter around him so he can run back to his hut.

He’s not the only one who’s taken notice. By the time he makes it back home, he sees the rest of his village quickly getting out of eyesight, except for the men who continue to guard the homes of their loved ones. Lance wants to run up to Papi and ask what’s going on, but he knows that the place for women and children is inside.

He doesn’t remember much of what happens that day. He catches a tiny glimpse of men in green, storming through the village. Earth Kingdom Lance thinks. It’s the first time he ever sees people of a different nation on their land. He tries to listen to as much as he can, but all he catches are muffled, garbled jumbles before the men in green leave his land as quickly as they came.

That night, Papi comes home, with a look that far surpasses grief, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Lance knows something is wrong.


	5. Winter V.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so quick explanation before you begin reading: in my google drive, i have a doc where all the blurbs for the winter section of this fic are saved. this chapter was originally not meant to be a part of the story, nor was it meant to be so long (other chapters average about 330 words and this is almost 600), but i felt that it bridged the gap between the chapter before this and the chapter that is to follow a bit better (and there was no way i could break this chapter in half in a coherent way since 300 words is not a lot to work with)
> 
> anyway, thank you so much for reading this and leaving comments and kudos! i appreciate all of it so much!

Hate is a strong, volatile word. There’s a lot of things that Lance doesn’t like, but hate is never on his tongue. He doesn’t like it when Papi comes home with barely anything from a long day of hunting and they have to ration their food so no one in the hut goes hungry. He doesn’t like it when the nights are so cold that he feels like when he closes his eyes, they’ll freeze shut and he may never see another rising sun.

But more than anything, he doesn’t like it when a big storm ends and he has to bundle up in a thick, navy parka to scour the snow and help find frozen corpses. It’s one of the only times Lance doesn’t like being a bender. He’s old enough now to go out with the men of the tribe on these searches (people always say that these are searches for survivors, but no one, not even Lance ever really expects to find any). He doesn’t know yet how to handle the bodies, how to check for signs of life or determine from a glance if the bodies they come across are dead, but as a bender, he is invaluable. He’s one of the few in the tribe who can push through the snow efficiently enough to cover ground quicker. When he bends and his hands start to shake, Lance tells himself that it’s because he’s cold, and not because he’s afraid of uncovering another rigid, purple body when he summons the snow to move out of his way.

And Lance dislikes these things. They fill him with anger and pain and make him sick to his stomach but he can explain them. He can tell you why he hates being cold and why he hates not having enough to eat and why he hates finding bodies when they sift through the snow. The only thing he can’t explain, the one thing he truly _hates_ is the men in green.

He can’t quite put his finger on it. He’s not sure how to phrase it. But ever since they came, Lance knows something is different. When he comes home from a long day of bending, no one seems eager to congratulate him. When he goes to the center of the village, the elders seems more reluctant to use their talents. And when Lance can’t take it anymore, he finally stands up one day at dinner with his family while Mami stirs a pot of sea prunes and asks,

“Why did those Earth Kingdom men come here? Why is everything so different since they came?”

“Things are just as they were when I was your age,” Abuela says grimly. She slurps her stew with a bleak look on her face. “You’re just finally old enough to see it.”

Lance bitterly drinks his own stew, knowing better than to continue asking questions. For now, he doesn't get it, but he doesn’t need to understand anything to know that deep down in his heart he hates the men in green for whatever they have done.

He looks at Abuela and thinks of her words; things were like this when she was young too.  


Lance decides that he hates the men in green for two reasons: first, for whatever they are doing now, and secondly for whatever they did back then.


	6. Winter VI.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i tried figuring out how many chapters are left in the winter section of this fic (i wanna say about 8 because all except 2 of the scenes i want to include in this section are written and just need to be edited or modified here and there)
> 
> also, depending on what my schedule and work load looks like, i might take a week or two off from posting so i can write all the chapters for the spring section of the fic, and then resume posting chapters close to every other day. i'll bring that up again once it's relevant, but for now i'll keep posting as often as i currently do

Lance doesn’t remember how old he is when Mami tells him not to waterbend outside anymore. At first, he thinks it’s a punishment. There must’ve been something he did. It would explain why no one smiles anymore when he tells them about the new moves he’s mastered, or why he gets hushed and pushed back into the hut whenever the men in green come back to their shores to speak to the elders. All Lance has to do is make up for his wrongdoing, whatever it is. That’s reasonable. He can do that. He goes hunting with Papi and offers to sew and clean and makes sure to be extra polite for weeks until he musters up the courage to ask if he’s allowed to waterbend again.

“I’ve been good, haven’t I?” Lance asks, his eyes wide and wavering. His chest swells and expands with hope and anticipation as he stares at his parents with big blue eyes. The silence he’s met with unsettles him more than he wants to admit. “Haven’t I?” he repeats.

Mami and Papi exchange a look, the same look Lance has noticed everyone in his village has had these days, ever since the men in green first came to the South all those months ago. Lance hates it. He hates how the excitement in his stomach is morphing into anger at his own lack of understanding, he hates that things are changing and he hates more than anything that no one is explaining anything. No one is talking to him.

Abuela finally stands to take the reigns on this, as the only person in the family who really, truly understands Lance.

“Come with me,” she says, reaching for his hand. “I’ll explain things to you.”

She walks with him to the outskirts of the village, where no one can see them, and she tells him the story of the men in green who came to the village. He listens carefully as she paints him a tale with her words, about men in _red_. Hot, angry, red firebenders who, as of late have been getting more aggressive in their hunt for waterbenders, and she tells him of the Earth Kingdom men, who travelled many miles to give warning, but also to offer protection, in the form of hiding waterbenders in their nation, where they would not be found.

When Lance asks why this is happening, Abuela says she doesn’t know.

“Things like this used to happen when I was a child,” she tells him. “But never on this scale. It’s never been this serious.”

Lance almost wants to lash out, to swing his arms around widely and cause tsunamis with the snow, to scream and shout and do something, _anything_ but he doesn’t. He's still, he's silent, he's angry.

“You know,” Abuela says amidst the silence. “I understand your pain and confusion right now, but this will not change things. The world is more dangerous than it has been before, but nothing will keep you from me, or the water.”

They sit out here, hidden from their village for a while, and listen to the waves crash.


	7. Winter VII.

Lance tries not to notice a lot of things. He tries not to notice that all the other kids in his village have stopped bending openly too. He tries not to notice how it feels like the entire tribe is mourning. If he doesn't acknowledge it, it's not happening, and it he doesn't have to deal with all the changes around him.

When they can, (which is very rarely) Lance and Abuela sneak out of the village and bend together. She warns him that this is dangerous; at any moment they may have to stop and run back to their hut where they’ll twiddle their fingers and contemplate how living in fear like this could ever constitute as _living_ at all, but whenever they start skating towards the outskirts of their village and Lance can feel his energy heightening as he grows closer to bonding with his element, it almost makes this all worth it.

Over the years, even with limited practice, Lance has been improving. His movements are more fluid, connected and effortless. He isolates streams and waves at will, transforms ice caps into puddles and vice versa, and as always, Abuela praises him for all the good he does. It's not as fun as when he was younger and he could bend out in the open without any qualms, but it's good. He still has his bending, he still has Abuela, and even on the days when the Earth Kingdom men come back to their shores, Lance still has his home. Things could be better; they could always be better, but for now it's okay. He's okay. Every hidden lesson with Abuela is a reminder that they're one step closer to a better tomorrow.


	8. Winter VIII.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a really weird aversion to naming OCs and minor characters in fics so just???? bear with me / forgive me

There’s a little bit of joy when his parents announce that Mami is pregnant again, this time, the elders predict, with twins. People congratulate Lance’s family often for their good fortune in these trying times. Lately, the men in green have been coming more often to offer a place in their nation for waterbenders, and slowly, people have been leaving. Children Lance grew up with are boarding these metal ships; men and women he knew so dearly are departing to keep their families safe. But Abuela promises him that they’re not going anywhere. There’s always threats of war like this, ever since she was a little girl, and things will blow over. They just need to stay calm, and be careful, and someday soon, she tells him, they’ll bend out in the open like they used to.

Except, Lance is not sure things will be like they were before. It feels like every day, he hears of someone else leaving their tribe. He walks through piles of snow and realizes there aren’t as many footsteps as there once were. Everything is shrinking and disappearing, except for Mami’s belly, which grows and swells and expands even as the village’s numbers begin to dwindle. Sometimes, Lance will put a hand to her stomach and tells her how excited he is to meet the twins once they’re born. He genuinely means it. With his people dropping like flies, his friends leaving, elders he so looked up to all becoming nothing more than distant memories of a simpler time, he thinks that the new babies are a blessing. When he passes by recently abandoned huts, when he crosses paths with newly broken families, he remembers the babies Mami carries inside her, like a shining light that will not go out, and he remembers, no matter how sad and scary things seem right now, they will be okay. When the men in green come back and he and Abuela huddle up inside to avoid drawing attention, when he watches his people being herded onto ships like cattle, he remembers the twins he will soon get to know, and he holds out, for just a little longer. Things will get better. They won’t live like this forever, and all Lance has to do is sit back and wait for it to happen.

He almost feels guilty when he prays the twins won’t be benders like him.


	9. Winter IX.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these were originally going to be 2 separate chapters but they ended up being so short that i just modified them and slapped em together. i think there's 3 or 4 more chapters for the winter section depending on how i choose to divi it up but i'm so happy to almost be a third of the way through this fic and to have gotte so much feedback from you guys already! seriously, thank you so much!

The men in green come back again and again, each time bringing more villagers onto their ships. Lance tries to ignore the conversations about it at home. Mami is only weeks away from labor and everything is stressful now, thinking about raising two more children in this environment.

Sometimes, his older brother and sister mention that Lance is next, and one day the men in green will come for him, but they never sound hateful. They’re not doing it to tease him. His brother always looks somber when he speaks. His sister, worried. They aren’t trying to scare Lance. They’re warning him.

It’s then that Lance realizes that he has nothing of importance to offer. His brother can hunt and fish; his sister is knowledgeable and can mix remedies and cook and clean. They're both old enough to marry and start families of their own, to join the tribe as productive, meaningful members of society. Even the twins, who have yet to be born, have each other.

Without waterbending, Lance has nothing.

Regardless, the universe cares little about whether or not Lance amounts to anything, and so the ships keep coming week after week, carting off more and more benders. It never stops hurting, Lance doesn't think it ever will, but he learns to hide the pain as time goes on. He thinks it's the first mark of him becoming a man; hiding his pain.

He makes the mistake of asking what will happen to their people once they reach the Earth Kingdom; _will they have a place to live? Food to eat? Will they be safe? Will they come back?_  but he learns that no one knows the answers, and the second sign of being an adult must be learning to keep his mouth shut.

So he does, and life resumes as usual for Lance, almost. The days pass by, the ships come and go, and he’s quiet, even on this particular day when he sees new ships coming closer to shore. He’s seen enough Earth Kingdom ships to ignore them; their presence is simply white noise. But... this is different. These do not come quietly and peacefully like the other ships. They come quickly and plentiful, and he knows something's wrong the moment he is hushed and pushed deep into the back of his hut. He doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t have to. The screams of his tribesmen speak for him:

“ _Fire Nation_!”

He’s almost old enough to go out with the other men of his tribe to fight, but not quite. Even if he was, he doesn’t have the skills to defend. He’s been so busy sneaking off with Abuela in his free time that he’s never actually learned how to use weapons, not like his older brother, who quickly charges out into the open with Papi to fight the intruders in their land. He looks at the other members of his household, Mami, his sister, Abuela, and he feels something he can’t describe. Guilt and anguish are good starting place.

The third mark of being an adult, Lance assumes, must be learning to tune things out. He hears people screaming in absolute agony, people begging for mercy, horrid noises as he stares at his hands waiting, just waiting for things to end. People are screaming, people are crying, and Lance realizes that people are _dying_. While he hides with his family where any firebender could storm in and kill them. And Lance’s life would end right here, and to the universe, it would mean nothing.

The rest is a blur to Lance.

He does not know how much time passes until his brother and Papi return, in bloody, burned clothing. But, they came back, and Lance is grateful for this. No one talks for the rest of the evening, but no one has to for Lance to know that somehow, _this_ is going to become the new normal.


	10. Winter X.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I was gone for so long. I got sick and I wasn't in the mood to write, especially with a lot of things going wrong with my exit project that needed my immediate attention. I hope this update was worth the wait!

The day the twins are born, Lance should be happy. They’re both beautiful little babies, a boy and a girl, crying and healthy and full of life. Everything that the village needs in these dark times. It’s been a while since the Fire Nation first came to the South, and there were a flurry of attacks afterwards, but for now, they haven’t been seen in weeks. Lance is smart enough to know this is nothing to celebrate though. The Fire Nation will be back, and Lance fears the next raid will be the worst yet.

Still, in times like these, you cannot live in ‘what ifs’ and Lance tries to be the best big brother he can to the twins. Sometimes, other villagers come to visit the newborns, to congratulate his family or offer whatever small gift they can afford, and the gestures are nice, but empty. None of this makes Lance happy. He’s not sure that anything could anymore.

He doesn’t want to think about death, but it’s hard not to when it encompasses everything now. It’s permanent, it’s scary, but he also knows it’s an escape. If he were dead, he wouldn’t be here, constantly on the cusp of a nervous breakdown that one day the Fire Nation will be back and they’ll find. They’ll find him, they’ll find Abuela, and when they do…

It’s not good to think like this, but Lance can’t help it. He’s only thirteen, much too young to be having thoughts like this, but it’d be easy, so, so easy for him to just end it all. He could slip out of his hut undetected and impale himself; he could wander too far from home and let nature take its course, letting the hunger and cold swallow him whole.

He won’t do that though. If he dies, it means the Fire Nation has won, as so he has to stay alive, if only to defy them.

But when the elders confirm that the likelihood of either of the twins being waterbenders is astronomically low, Lance smiles for the first time in a long time. The twins are not like him and abuela. They’re safe.

He wishes that this knowledge didn’t make him as happy as it does.


End file.
